Below, I’ll review website layouts from across the web. We will look at several key things that many of the top sites have in common. I’ll also share some insights into why one site might choose something totally different from another using real data.

What website layout tips can we get from top news and media sites?

Let’s take a look at some of the most popular news and information sites. This should give us some insights from some of the world’s most popular publishers.

I picked 20 well-known news and media sites from across the web. I tried to make sure I included several that have well-publicized data science departments.

It showed that by identifying and tracking user behavior that publishers could increase ad revenue and objectively give visitors a more engaging experience by slightly changing ad combinations based on how similar visitors had responded to these elements in the past.

Did these publishers regularly include website slideshows?

Slideshows — or swipable content on mobile devices — usually have both proponents and detractors.

Sites that use these mechanisms obviously hope it will lead to users visiting more pages, and thus more ad impressions and pageviews.

How many images are these publishers using in their articles?

We know that word count can play a huge role in engagement time — and that it varies from site to site — but what about image count?

Many publishers will only use one image at the top of the page to kick off the article (Wired is a good example of this).

But, how many use more images than that?

Less than you might think.

Only 25% of the sites used 3 or more images. The most common website layout for images was to only use one image at the top of the article.

Only 1 site in the sample size had no images in its typical article.

Surprisingly, only having 2 images was pretty uncommon as well.

Where did they ask for visitors to subscribe to newsletters?

A major trend among these major publishers is to build and expand their readership. Many are trying to build subscriber lists or newsletter lists to maintain a connection to their audience.

As most publishers continue to reduce reliance on Google and Facebook for traffic, what can we learn from these publishers about where they try to engage visitors for subscriptions or newsletter sign-ups?

There was a lot of diversity here with no clear winner among these publishers.

The most common place to find these types of calls to action were in the publisher’s sidebar.

This is a stark contrast with — the much more aggressive — pop-up window that was the second-most-popular form of newsletter or subscription sign-up.

The Washington Post is a good example of someone who uses both a fixed menu item and a sidebar call to action for subscription advertisements.

What to look for when testing website layouts

As you would probably imagine, few of these publishers are blindly implementing these practices.

Likely all of these popular publishers are implementing some form of testing to determine which layouts help them deliver the right balance of visitor experience with total website revenue.

This is actually a more difficult equation to solve than most people think.

What determines a good experience from a bad one?

There is a phenomenon known as Fake UX. It is essentially the manipulation of objective metrics like time on site to falsely simulate a good visitor experience; despite the experience actually being bad.

For example, time on site being high isn’t necessarily great if the person is spending lots of time waiting for a page to load.

The best way to determine good experiences from great ones is to look at engagement metrics.

What should we learn from this?

It is obviously very interesting to see what top publishers are implementing on their sites.

This gives us some insight into what these publishers may have tested and ultimately decided worked best for their goals.

What we can’tsee are the results of their testing and business motivations behind many of these decisions (are they more focused on subscriptions than visitor revenue).

It is almost always best to do your own website layout testing and to sort through your own visitor segments to identify ways to improve experiences for your visitors and boost overall website revenue.

Questions, thoughts, opinions? Leave them below and I will answer them as they come my way.

About The Author

Tyler is an award-winning marketer, SEO expert, successful blogger, and keynote speaker. He has composed content for some of the world's top publications and has over a decade of experience building businesses in the digital space. Tyler is the current Head of Marketing at Ezoic and serves as an SEO and marketing expert for start-up competitions across the U.S.